Sled Assisted in the Western Uintas

This past week on Thursday I finally cashed in on a creative Christmas present from Taylor: a one-day sled rental. Maybe tired of hearing me say, over and over again, that the only way to tour in the Uintas is to access them by sled, she’d arranged for a two-seater to take us in across the flats to check out the Wasatch’s scary-snowpack neighbor.

I don’t know much about sleds, but I sure had fun driving it into the Western Uintas on snowy roads and frozen lakes. We’re amateurs, so naturally there were some mishaps. Only 50% of the backpacks carried on the back got pulled into the snowmobile’s track and ruined. Reaching the end of the summer access roads, we parked the sled and set out for a 2.5 mile skin to our objective.

With some friendly intel from a local guide, we headed to a North-facing burn area to try to find some sheltered, low-angle snow that wouldn’t offer us the scary deep-slab problem that has been pervasive in the Uintas this winter.

While the snow was incredibly aspect dependent, on the rick aspect, it made for incredible skiing. Creamy, settled, and predictable.

I’ve heard from a lot of people that you don’t want to own a sled because they break, and you don’t want to borrow a sled, because they break. So, I was relieved to finally park the thing back on the trailer without any mishaps.

I don’t think we’ll be doing much more of this any time soon, in part because it’s just simply too complicated, and besides, we don’t have anywhere to store a sled. Still, it did spawn some ideas.